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Brave Browser for ad-free YouTube and speed

Retro

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Retro submitted a new resource:

Brave Browser for ad-free YouTube and speed - Give it a try

Lots of people watch YouTube videos and I, in particular, post lots of YouTube videos on this site.

And the ads are annoying, very annoying. They irritate the hell out of me, in fact, just so disruptive and recently they've started becoming longer (some are 15 seconds v 5 seconds) and more intrusive.

I recently tried Brave for watching YT videos and it does what it claims to do: let you watch YT videos completely ad-free for free without having to buy YT's expensive subscription. How it...

Read more about this resource...
 

Uncrowned

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I tried Brave and wasn't a huge fan. Plus most of my YouTube watching is done on my phone so that all falls apart anyway.
 

Retro

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You can get Brave for the smartphone too where it also plays without ads.

Personally, I use Brave only for watching videos.
 

FF

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I'm interested in the speed aspect of Brave. As for ads, I use Ublock Origin, an open source adblocker for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, etc. and have never had a problem. I haven't tested it on Firefox, though.
 

Retro

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I might just try Ublock as Ad Block Plus certainly isn't 100% effective.
 

Retro

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No, it hasn't been for over a year now. I guess I really should take down this resource.

Interestingly, they were always being funded by Google, so I wonder what arrangement they had with them to block their ads and why Google would allow it. That arrangement must have ended at some point.
 

AllThingsTech

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No, it hasn't been for over a year now. I guess I really should take down this resource.

Interestingly, they were always being funded by Google, so I wonder what arrangement they had with them to block their ads and why Google would allow it. That arrangement must have ended at some point.
Suggestive of some profit drop?
 

AllThingsTech

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Ugh, Youtube have now gone as far as to trial non-skippable 30-second ads and that ads will begin appearing for Premium Lite users!


@Retro I hope that if you decide to delete this resource, these latest posts won’t be deleted. Perhaps it’d make sense to split this discussion on Youtube from post #7 into a new thread ? Just a suggestion 🙂
 

Retro

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30 seconds, damn, that's offensive.

I've updated the resource to clarify that Brave no longer blocks YouTube ads.
 

AllThingsTech

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30 seconds, damn, that's offensive.
Tell me about it! It’s taking the piss!

I've updated the resource to clarify that Brave no longer blocks YouTube ads.
I’d recommend you update the thread title too given that guests have permission to view the discussion but not the resource itself, and they may find this misleading. Up to you though - just my opinion 😊
 

Retro

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Don't worry, they'll get worse over time and then eventually demand a "premium" subscription just like YouTube to get rid of them. Quite a nasty tactic really.
 

AllThingsTech

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Don't worry, they'll get worse over time and then eventually demand a "premium" subscription just like YouTube to get rid of them. Quite a nasty tactic really.
Ah, copycat business models. 🤦‍♀️

Does anyone here acc pay for Youtube Premium?!

And OMG, something went wrong in my Tidal subscription - I hit a billing error, and somehow MULTIPLE subscriptions got set up with the same account and same Apple Pay account.

sigh…
It’s not like I can call up Tidal either, they’re a company based in New York! Also, had it not been for this error, I wouldn’t have noticed that the subscription is priced higher via the iOS app due to Apple’s policy on commissions on In-App Purchases. So I was spending £13.99 instead of £10.99. Lesson learnt the hard way - always check prices on the website! 🤦‍♀️😬
 

AllThingsTech

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Well, the good news is that Apple will be forced to allow third-party app stores on iOS to avoid anti-competition:
Hopefully this will mean that app prices and in-app purchases will be lower given the prices won’t have to account for commissions charged by Aplle.

Do you think it’s unethical that Apple charge commissions on in-app purchases? I’m keen to hear everyone’s thoughts 🙂
 

AllThingsTech

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Yikes, streaming services are now pushing boundaries by increasing commercial breaks, reducing the value of ad-supported streaming services, given that consumers are questioning the value of a streaming services supported by ads that extend past a convenient break, given time constraints.
Just because linear TV displays an average of 13-16 minutes of ads per hour, streaming services feel free to exaggerate on their claims that “they show fewer ads than alternatives”.
 

AllThingsTech

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Ah, copycat business models. 🤦‍♀️

Does anyone here acc pay for Youtube Premium?!

And OMG, something went wrong in my Tidal subscription - I hit a billing error, and somehow MULTIPLE subscriptions got set up with the same account and same Apple Pay account.

sigh…
It’s not like I can call up Tidal either, they’re a company based in New York! Also, had it not been for this error, I wouldn’t have noticed that the subscription is priced higher via the iOS app due to Apple’s policy on commissions on In-App Purchases. So I was spending £13.99 instead of £10.99. Lesson learnt the hard way - always check prices on the website! 🤦‍♀️😬
UPDATE: I received a refund for the duplicate payments. Apple service = no fuss, yay! As much as ya hate Apple, ya can’t fault customer service 😁

Fancy posts you make on Reddit to be used for marketing purposes? I figure not!

So, what’s next?
Reddit will be placing streams of conversations of positive messages in ads.
Am I the only one who feels they’ve gone too far?
@Retro imagine using members’ posts within threads in ads :P ! But aye, it’s awesome that you run a completely ad-free forum! Respect 🫡
 

Retro

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Fancy posts you make on Reddit to be used for marketing purposes? I figure not!

So, what’s next?
Reddit will be placing streams of conversations of positive messages in ads.
Am I the only one who feels they’ve gone too far?
That's pretty underhanded and the article makes a good job of explaining why: users are being exploited as unpaid advertisers and without their knowledge.

Glad you got your duplicate payments refunded in the end. Now you bring up Tidal, I can tell you why I'd never subscribe to that or any other streaming music service: DRM. Absolutely detest it. I want my music to be 100% accessible to me, not under the control of some big corp squeezing money out of me. I make two exceptions to this rule:
  1. YouTube music videos as they're free and my music section is based on these
  2. Sky or other TV subscription like Netflix, since once I've watched a program, regardless of content, I don't usually want to watch it again, unlike musc which I listen to over and over and will come back to in the future
Having said that, I don't have a problem with people
 

AllThingsTech

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Glad you got your duplicate payments refunded in the end. Now you bring up Tidal, I can tell you why I'd never subscribe to that or any other streaming music service: DRM. Absolutely detest it. I want my music to be 100% accessible to me, not under the control of some big corp squeezing money out of me. I make two exceptions to this rule:
  1. YouTube music videos as they're free and my music section is based on these
  2. Sky or other TV subscription like Netflix, since once I've watched a program, regardless of content, I don't usually want to watch it again, unlike musc which I listen to over and over and will come back to in the future
I’m all about audio quality and that is what Tidal offers - uncompressed FLAC (equivalent to CD and sometimes even better) and even Dolby (but the compressed version, Dolby Digital+, not Dolby TrueHD) on some audio tracks.

So, how do you like to listen to your music? Are you @Retro enough to use vinyl tapes? :P I’m acc surprised that so many young ppl are into it ngl 👌

Now I’m very angry - I subscribed to Disney+ Premium tier, as this offers Dolby Atmos. However, I’m not even receiving 5.1 surround sound, let alone Dolby Atmos, despite titles being clearly labelled as such and my audio system definitely being compatible given that these audio formats compile fine on Netflix! The lesser tiers have 5.1 and I’m not even receiving said service! I’m gonna complain as I’m not receiving the service I’m paying for! Note that I googled this issue and other users also experience said problem.
 

Retro

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Oh yes, the audio quality is very important for me and another reason why I won't subscribe to music services. At beatport.com, you can buy the music DRM free in wav format and it sounds glorious!

I've left crappy analog records and tapes far behind, believe me.

I'm not surprised at your Disney experience. I took a £2pm 3 month trial sub a couple of years ago and the service was garbage, so I quit at the end of the trial and told them exactly why on their feedback form.

And I mean garbage: the Sky Q app would lock up randomly forcing me to quit back to the Q box and restart. Worse still, it forgot its place so a movie could be 20 minutes behind. Then, the navigation was terrible, making finding the right spot to continue even harder.

Even if it didn't lock up and I just stopped playback and restarted, it would forget. I don't know how they're still in business with broken functionality like this. I'll bet it still does it now.

I couldn't be bothered to try it on the PC as it was Sky box or nothing for me. Why should I pay full price and be forced into a workaround?
 

AllThingsTech

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I don’t have these issues with Disney+ that you describe :) . I can pause and rewind just fine 👍
Are you sure this is a Disney+ issue as opposed to a Sky service issue? ;) Note that I use the Disney+ native app on Android TV. I didn’t even know that Disney+ is accessibls via some Sky app!

The additional cost of DRM free music is storage space. I prefer streaming services. TIDAL is CD quality and sometiems better. By that I mean FLAC varies from 16 bit/44.1Khz to 24-bit 192kHz . You can’t truly tell the difference at that point though!

Are your ears picky enough with your audio system being detailed enough to discern the audible difference between Spotify@320kbps and between lossless audio?
 
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